Record Reviews
Adalita
By René Schaefer
Shadowed by the tragic passing of bandmate Dean Turner, the debut solo album by Magic Dirt’s Adalita is testament to one woman’s boundless passion and imagination, writes RENÉ SCHAEFER.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] As principal songwriter and frontwoman of Magic Dirt since the early 1990s, Adalita has weathered fluctuating musical fashions, complex inter-band relationships and record company fickleness, while producing a consistently strong body of recorded work. The Dirt’s live shows were always highly energetic affairs, with an edge of unpredictability and sonic chaos making them more than just a recital of songs. Right from the earliest days, when they were still known as The Jim Jim’s, there was an air of specialness about this band; a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude that was not a pose, but a real toughness, testament to the band’s origins in Geelong (Victoria’s equivalent to Detroit). With Magic Dirt on indefinite hiatus following the death of bass player Dean Turner (Adalita’s soulmate, muse, confidant, musical foil and sounding board) in 2009, this solo album marks the beginning of yet another chapter in her otherwise remarkable career.
Prompted by Turner’s encouragement to record songs that for one reason or another did not fit the Magic Dirt template, the album began as an intimate collaboration between two old friends and ex-partners, an ailing Turner taking on the role of producer and creative advisor. The result is a stark and revealing document, an impressionistic glimpse into the artist’s heart and soul. Musically, it’s deceptively simple, Adalita’s gritty guitar augmented by only the sparsest contributions by multi-instrumentalist JP Shilo (Hungry Ghosts, Rowland S Howard), Magic Dirt guitarist Raul Sanchez and guest vocalist Amaya Laucirica. Ad’s vocals are very much at the forefront, shining in this minimal setting in a way that would have been hard to achieve with a full rock band.
The tone of the album is set with opener ‘Hot Air’, its theme of erotic obsession told in a few succinct lines of poetry, against a simple tune. Once upon a time American singers like Liz Phair, Kristin Hersh and Chan Marshall excelled at this kind of songwriting, but this is pure Adalita, and any points of comparison are fleeting and soon fade. The reverb-drenched slow dance of ‘Perfection’ has an air of sadness and beauty on a par with Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’. The title of this paean to joyful love is entirely apt - nothing could be added or subtracted from this song to make it any more affecting.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Hot Air-Adalita by Mushroom Music
In ‘The Repairer’, Adalita addresses mortality with the simple, yet haunting metaphor of a plug being pulled from its socket, and infuses it with gallows’ humour in the image of the “grim repairer” – death as the technician, knocking on the door to cut the power. Gritty guitars and a frantically stomping folk rhythm change the pace on ‘Jewel Thief’, Shilo’s percussion somehow lending the song a rural feel. Still, it’s not exactly a country hoedown, more a misty winter’s day on an abandoned farm.
‘Invite Me’ introduces a different mode of story telling, alternating a semi-spoken recollection of dream images and reminiscences, addressed to a long-ago lover. Set to a Neil Young-esque guitar riff, it’s shot through with heartbreaking nostalgia. Never afraid to let the personal intrude into her art, the effect is as goosebump-inducing as reading someone’s diary.
“The album began as an intimate collaboration between two old friends and ex-partners, an ailing Turner taking on the role of producer and creative advisor.”
The pop sing-along of ‘Good Girl’ contrasts perfectly with the enigmatically titled instrumental ‘Lassa Hanta’. In the latter, Adalita’s interest in soundscape comes to the fore. A backwards guitar loop is reminiscent of early Magic Dirt experiments which were usually confined to B-sides or hidden album tracks. Raul Sanchez adds the kind of shimmering wash of guitar that used to be the hallmark of Andria Prudente from the shoegaze band Arrosa. The connection is not that far-fetched, as Prudente played alongside Adalita, Turner and The Paradise Motel’s Merida Sussex in a band called Seaville in the late ’90s, which mined similar low-key territory to some of this record.
One thing Adalita excels at, song after song, is articulating lust and all its physical cravings and romantic yearnings. It crops up again on ‘Fool Around’, before giving way to the wild ride that is ‘Goin Down’. This is Adalita at her Stooges-esque best. The relentlessly driving guitar riff that runs through the entire song is as hard-as-nails as anything Ron Asheton ever came up with in his Ann Arbor basement. More impactful for its sparseness, ‘Goin Down’ churns along with menacing intent, while spooky effects creep in from the wings. The lyric is a string of disjointed, surreal imagery. Its abstractions may allude to drugs (“I’m going down to Chinatown”) or they might mean nothing at all, their textual juxtapositions as accidental as a Burroughs/Gysin cut-up.
‘Night Orchid’ closes out the album with another soundscape moment, composed mostly of slide guitar and heavily reverbed plucked notes. Even at four minutes, it’s far too brief, but leaves room for tantalising speculations as to what would happen if Adalita were ever commissioned to compose film soundtracks.
Adalita is a surprisingly varied, but entirely self-consistent solo album, beholden to no one and nothing other than one woman’s passion and imagination. At this point in an already brilliant career, it points the way forward for an artist who is in this music caper for life, who is constantly evolving, and whose creative power is mature, irrepressible and far from waning.
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